The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1887-12-08
The Age OF Aluminium.

to take the testimony of elderly men who
remember the good old times before the
beginning of the changes now complain.
ed of. At the semi.centennial of Michi-
gan in 1856, there was present Massa,
chusetts machinist, James Bartlett, long
resident in Detroit, who made an address
on the progress of machinery since Mich.
igan became State in 1886. In the
course Of it lie narrated his own eXpe.
ricnce and that of his elder associates in
the machine shops of Massachusetts, half
a century ago. His own recollections
went back forty-fve years, for he first
began work in 1912, in machine shop,
employing about fifty men on cotton ma
chinery for Lowell. He said:
The wages of machinist in this shop
were 81 to s1.25 day; one nabob of
pattern.maker received the great sum of
S1.5O. They went to work at S o'clock
in the morning and worked till 7.9O at
night, with an hour for breakfast and
three quarters for dinner. Itwas several
years before we obtained eleven hours a
day. 1t has now been ten hours day
for twenty-five years or more, and we
grumble at that, though We may get more
than twice the wages we did forty years
ago, and we are hoping to get the same
or higher pay for working eight hours.
know the condition Of the machinist is
better than it was when 1 first joined the
guild; he has better pay, better houses,
better education, better living, and 1
hope he will keep on improving for the
next fifty years. Large machine shops
were started before 1886; one in Lowell
employed over ,OCO men on cotton ma
chinery. Now the country is dotted with
them. For my part, don't want any
more Of the good old times. The present
time is the best we have ever had, though
I hope not the best we shall ever see. In
so years we have reduced our hours of
labor from II to s hours day; our
wages are doubled and the necessities of
life are much cheaper. A barrel Of salt
which cost $3.50 years ago has been sold
in MICHIGAN for IS cents. The great
curse of drunkenness is very much dimin.
ished. We live in better houses, better
warmed and lighted, and we are better
clothed; high school education is in
the reach of every child; books are free
to all; the poorest laborer who meets
with an accident in our streets will re-
ceive surgical MD that no king could
purchase fifty years ago. Our great
railroads distribute the fruits Of labor go
that famines are impossible. Beef killed
on the prairies is sent all over the country
and supplies the markets of Europe.
Fish from the salt seas and from our
great lakes are eaten fresh all over the
Continent, and tropical fruits are peddled
round all our streets"
For particular classes of persons there
has been steady improvement, as is
shown, and in the country, as whole,
there is progress out of proportion to
poverty. But there is an increase in the
hopelessly poor class. There are more
rich Americans than in the old days, but
there are, also, more Americans who are
in the depths of misery and degradation,
and through no special fault of their
own.
The speculations of Mr.. Bartlett con.
cerning the future are almost startling in
their apparent boldness. he says:
~ see two things beginning to loom up
which may completely change our whole
system of manufacturing; and the use of
coal and iron may become thing of the
past. The use of natural gas is in its
infancy; but in the iron aud glass works
of Pittsburg it has taken the place of
20, 900 tons of coal day. If it should
be found inexhaustible; il, as some
claim, it comes from the decomposition of
water by the internal heat of the earth,
and is thus liable to be found everywhere,
so that we can getour heat without labor,
it would be the greatest step the world
has ever taken. Distributed through the
entire world, one.fourth of every clay
bank is composed of metal, (alumi-
num-, ductile and malleable in the
highest degree, indestructible by acids,
lighter than glass and much stronger
than steel. When first made it cost
many times its weight in gold. In 1878
it cost s64 pound in 1854 it was fur.
nished for 81 pound, and now it can be
produced for 81. We may see the day
when it will be as cheap as iron. If this
should happen, it would make more
change in the world than the use of steam
has made in fifty years. I prophesy that
fifty years hence the machinist who takes
up my subject and passes it along for
another half century, will have for his
text natural gas and aluminium"
Who shall cay that this will not be?
1t is not as astonishing as what has been
accomplished with steam and electricity.
1t is hard, nevertheless, to realize that
there could be a Pennsylvania without
coal mining and pig iron. The clay
banks would take their place, under pro-
cesses invented by enterprising Americans
probably Southerners-and iron be-
come as useless as the flint arrow heads
and stone chisels of our ancestors. The
world do move!
IVo,,@t, no,ou Co,-r,opc